"You Will Die" Difficulty... Can I Have It?

[Altena]

The first mode anyone goes through should be easy (or story) mode. That way the dev's don't end up making important storyline content that only the upper 10% could see. I say that as a former hardcore player back in ffxi who was on the bleeding edge of content. CoP was the most amazing storyline SE has come up with in the past few years, partly due to the difficulty. Although personally, I'd lower the "difficulty" a bit by opening up the content to all as far as jobs/classes (as opposed to "x3 blm, x1 whm, x1 brd or rdm, x1 tank). Having fights be tough due to coordination and timing is great. Having fights be tough since you're not bringing in a minimum of 4 faceroll classes is not real difficulty.

I'd ideally like to see something along the lines of SWTOR's tiers:

Story Mode (intro raid level, fairly weak drops but full storyline)
Normal Mode (Where the "real" game begins. Powerful drops, upped mob damage and health, new boss abilities)
Hard Mode (Upped damage and health from boss, new abilities, shorten acceptable margin of player error. Best quality drops in addition to possible optional bosses)

Something like this yes ... however

I do hope that the final mission in the "main story" (until an expansion) is much harder then the first.. All stories should get progressively more difficult otherwise you can just auto-pilot through it.

[ChiefCurrahee]

Looking at the alpha video gameplay, they had a person who was over leveled vs the mobs by at least 5+ levels take significant damage from the mobs they were fighting. Now they weren't being very mindful or in any real danger of dieing per say. But I think under the current battle algorithm I think we'll get a {decent challenge} from same level mobs.

I prefer challenging normal content.

I definitely don't want it to be faceroll easy like GW2 where if you mouse over a mob you cast insta-death on the entire zone.

When it comes to group content like F.A.T.E. or dungeons I want it to be significantly more difficult, where it takes the abilities of an entire group to survive an encounter. I also don't want the skipping of trash type mobs. Where Running a dungeon becomes just that RUNNING

No thanks! I hope they have no leashing for mobs in dungeons.

[Zantetsuken]

Easy solution:

Introduce special 'Luck Materia' that adjusts RNG in your favor slightly, but drops each of your stats by 5 and HP/MP by 20.

It should be meldable to all gear.

The more you stack, the weaker you get, but the better your 'Luck'.

Hard Mode~

[Klive]

I'm not saying I'm against hard content, but is it worth developer's time to create super hard content.

This is a bell curve. If you ever learn statistics, this is used constantly


Making content that is for the farther right (like SD+1 or SD+2), more hardcore, group worth their effort? Content that 16 to 2% of player can will enjoy? Or is it, as a developer, better to make content for more left, less hardcore, group. Like at the SD-1 spot would be probably ideal, for profit. 84% of the population could handle that.

In short, hardcore content is not really cost effective from a development stand point. Resources to to appease 2 to 16% of the player base is hardly worth it.

EDIT: This is just a sample bell curve. Just used to make a point.

[Norack]

I would definitely love it if this game was at all challenging. But unfortunately thats not the way they make MMO's anymore, or games in general for that matter imo. Heck I know this isn't FFXIV but one thing that kinda got me upset was that i bought halo 4 for the xbox i never played a halo game before or really play FPS's, and i started out on legendary difficulty to see if i could get all the achievements. That was the easiest game I have ever played i think, i would hate to see how easy that game is when you aren't playing it on legendary, was a real disappointment.

[Shikimaru]

I think a lot of FF fan (even more Japanese FF Fan) want hardcore endgame, I really don't think they'll do only easy content. I'm sure that the cristal tower and Bahamuth labyrinth will be pretty hard content (I hope). Of course they have to do easy content for everyone. But they are japanese, I trust them to add pretty hard stuff in this game.

[Norack]

they should actually give us "hard" mode, i forgot what it is but didnt they change all difficulty settings from Japan since super mario brothers 2? making hard mode be hard over in japan but outside of japan they change hard mode to actually be medium, medium is easy, and easy is super easy. so there actually is no hard mode, except for over in japan.

[Elexia]

I think a lot of FF fan (even more Japanese FF Fan) want hardcore endgame, I really don't think they'll do only easy content.

They do. They want to pull in non FF fans as well, the fans used to super easy games with occasional hard encounters that you do only once.

The quickest turnoff to a casual player is something being hard/too hard or taking longer than 30 minutes to complete and SE wants to avoid alienating anyone because people WILL COMPLAIN if the content isn't accessible to their level 20 just like it is to their 50.

they should actually give us "hard" mode, i forgot what it is but didnt they change all difficulty settings from Japan since super mario brothers 2? making hard mode be hard over in japan but outside of japan they change hard mode to actually be medium, medium is easy, and easy is super easy. so there actually is no hard mode, except for over in japan.

Yes, Japan also doesn't release tougher RPGs out to the west because it doesn't mesh well with western gamers, i.e some RPGs have permanent death, something western gamers would bitch about heavily, especially in the early days, i.e:

"I put all this work into this character and s/he is completely gone?! HORRIBLE GAME DESIGN RABBLE RABBLE"

Thus word of mouth and lower overall sales they may as well not have localized it.

[Wolfie]

play my little pony online.. )

If this actually existed, I would have been gone a long long time ago.

[Shikimaru]

They do. They want to pull in non FF fans as well, the fans used to super easy games with occasional hard encounters that you do only once.

I'm sorry but you're wrong, it is true that everyting will be easier for the eventually futur new players, but they want to satisfy the actual players as well, and we will have hard content, a lot of players already asked and they already answered, I remember a post of Yoshida talking about a dungeon with extremely hard content.

I know you're trying to say that cause you won't be disappointed if it happens, cause you said so (I do the same everytime ) but we'll have pretty hard content for sure !